The Social Man Era

Serendipity at Western Electric

A well accepted view was that there was a clear-cut cause and effect relationship between the quality of the physical work environment and the well-being and productivity of the worker. From 1924 to 1927 research was conducted at the Hawthorne Plant of Western Electric (supply arm of American Telephone and Telegraph Company AT&T) to determine the precise relationship between illumination and individual efficiency. Even after 3 long years of research the results were inconclusive

 George Elton Mayo (1880-1949) was an Australian educated at University of Adelaide in Logic and Philosophy and later studied Medicine in Edinburgh, Scotland and taught at the Wharton School of Finance and Commerce of the University of Pennsylvania.

 Mayo noted that a remarkable change of mental attitude in the group was the factor in explaining the Hawthorne mystery. In spite of all the changes made in different conditions like illumination, heat etc. productivity went on increasing. Mayo felt that the test room girls had become a a social unit, enjoyed the increased attention of the experimenters, and developed a sense of participation in the project. Mayo had opened the door to research into social man.

Mary Parker Follett (1868-1933)

Search for Organizational Integration

Educated at Radcliffe College, brought a wide variety of interests and knowledge to bear upon management thought. She was an ardent supporter of the German philosopher, Johann Fichte (1762-1814) . Guided by the philosophy of Fichte, Follett stated in her work The New State that we find the true man only through group organization. The potentialities of the individual remain potentialities until they are released by group life. Man discovers his true nature, gains his true freedom only through the group.

 The group principle was to be the new psychology and was designed to renounce the old ideas that man thought, felt, and act independently. Rather the group man lived in association with others. Goal of any group effort was an integrative unity which transcended the parts. Follett advocated that any conflict of interests could be resolved through integration which involved finding a solution that satisfied all sides without compromise and dominance.

Chester I. Barnard (1886-1961).

Studied economics at Harvard for three years but left as a drop-out not finding time to do an inconsequential course in laboratory science. But he became a great management scholar in due course. In The Functions of the Executive developed a theory of organizations

 He propounded that by examining the formal organization, it was possible to provide for cooperation and accomplish its goals. Bernard defined an organization as a system of consciously coordinated personal activities or forces and it encompassed all types of organizations including military and religious ones.

According to Bernard, executive work is not of the organization, but the specialized work of maintaining the organization in operation Bernard postulated three executive functions: 1. To provide a system of communication 2. To promote the securing of essential personal efforts 3. To formulate and define purpose

People at work
Social scientists started probing human behavior in industry in the first three decades of 20th century. While the engineer appeared to dominate the scientific management movement, the human relationships movement had drawn in contributions from sociologists, psychologists, and anthropologists.

Gestalt Psychology
A basic premise in the research into the social facet of man was that all organizational behavior involved some human multiplier effect. Gestalt psychology brought to prominence by the work of Austrian Christian von Ehrenfels (1890) and the German Max Werthiemer (1912) represented an organismic approach which emphasized not the parts or units but the patterns, wholes, configurations etc., which made the whole appear to be more than the sum of parts.

 Each individual himself highly variable and complex due to his unique genetic composition and his family , social and work experiences, became even more variable and complex when placed in interaction with other unique individuals. This multiplier effect meant that new means had to be devised to analyze, explain, predict, and control human behavior.

Men and Motivation

Abraham H. Maslow (1908-1970) was an American psychologist. He is noted for his conceptualization of a hierarchy of human needs, and is considered the father of humanistic psychology.

 Maslow was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York as the eldest of seven children. His parents were uneducated Jewish immigrants from Russia. Maslow opened up the possibility of a multi-dimensional approach to motivation by proposing a theoretical hierarchy of mans needs

In 1943, he identified at least five sets of these needs: Physiological Safety Love Esteem Self-actualization These were related to one another and were arranged in a hierarchy of prepotency (i.e. urgency of the drive).

Peter Ferdinand Drucker

Drucker (1909-2005) was a writer and management consultant. Widely considered to be the father of modern management, he had explored how humans are organized across all sectors of societyin business, government and the nonprofit world. He had predicted many of the major developments of the late twentieth century, including privatization and decentralization; the rise of Japan to economic world power; the decisive importance of marketing; and the emergence of the information society. In 1959, Drucker coined the term knowledge worker.

In contrast to the functions of the manager described in texts, Drucker developed three broader managerial functions: 1) Managing a business manager must put economic considerations first 2) Managing Managers introduced the notion of management by objectives 3) Managing workers and work treating the human being as the most vital resource of the firm

Management Science
H. Dodge, Ronald Fisher (1890 - 1962), and Thornton C. Fry introduced statistical techniques into management-studies. In the 1940s, Patrick Blackett combined these statistical theories with microeconomic theory and gave birth to the science of operations research. Operations research, sometimes known as "management science" (but distinct from Taylor's scientific management), attempts to take a scientific approach to solving management problems, particularly in the areas of logistics and operations.

Chris Argyris
Argyris (born July 16, 1923 in USA) is an American business theorist, Professor Emeritus at Harvard. He is commonly known for seminal work in the area of "Learning Organizations".

Action Science, one of Argyris' collaborative works with Robert Putnam and Diana Mclain Smith, developed together with Donald Schon as well, advocates an approach to research that focuses on generating knowledge that is useful in solving practical problems.

 Chris Argyris early research explored the impact of formal organizational structures, control systems and management on individuals and how they responded and adapted to them. This research resulted in the books Personality and Organization, 1957 and Integrating the Individual and the Organization, 1964.

Douglas McGregor
Douglas McGregor (1906 - 1964) was a management professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management and president of Antioch College from 1948 to 1954. His 1960 book The Human Side of Enterprise had a profound influence on education practices.

 In the book he identified an approach of creating an environment within which employees are motivated via authoritative, direction and control or integration and selfcontrol, which he called theory X and theory Y respectively. Theory Y is the practical application of Dr. Abraham Maslows humanistic school of psychology, or third force psychology, applied to scientific management.

Frederick Herzberg
Frederick Irving Herzberg (1923 - 2000) was a noted psychologist who became one of the most influential names in business management. He is most famous for introducing job enrichment and the Motivator-Hygiene theory.

 His 1968 publication "One More Time, How Do You Motivate Employees?" had sold 1.2 million reprints by 1987 and was the most requested article from the Harvard Business Review.

 Two factor theory Herzberg proposed the Motivation-Hygiene Theory, also known as the two factor theory of job satisfaction. According to his theory, people are influenced by two factors: Satisfaction, which is primarily the result of the motivator factors namely Achievement, Recognition, Work Itself ,Responsibility, Promotion, Growth These factors help increase satisfaction but have little effect on dissatisfaction.

 Dissatisfaction is primarily the result of hygiene factors namely Pay and Benefits, Company Policy and Administration, Relationships with co-workers, Physical Environment, Supervision, Status, Job Security These factors, if absent or inadequate, cause dissatisfaction, but their presence has little effect on long-term satisfaction

Rensis Likert
American educator and organizational psychologist Rensis Likert (19031981) is best known for his research on management styles. He developed the Likert scale and the linking pin model.
During the 1960s and 1970s, his books on management theory were extremely popular in Japan and their impact can be seen across modern Japanese organizations. He had isolated two dimensions called the employee orientation and the production orientation.